I sat across from a friend at lunch today and we began discussing life. She talked about how both Paul and Jesus came to demonstrate love by example. We focus a lot on how Paul went after the lost but we forget how he sought to unite believers.
This reminded me of one of my first years of teaching. I had everything prepared, it was our first lesson and the letter was A. I wrote some words that started with A matching them with pictures, taught my students a quick song about apples, then finally put an apple on each of their 5 tables for them to draw.
Well, this is where it flopped. I looked around and only saw green and red scribbles. Then it dawned on me. They didn't know how to draw a circle. I had unintentionally set the bar to high.
I told my friend there will be times when I don't know what my co-workers know and maybe they're either too embarrassed to say they don't know how to do something or they think they are doing it correctly. I'm sure I'll need correction too, but as I step into this new role I'm reminded of the importance of asking questions.
My job is not to come in and say "Oh man, you didn't this correctly." It's walk alongside them and say "Hey, this is great, but let me show you what I'm looking for. " I must model how to do things so that they can then do them well. A person can only work to the best of their knowledge. If I haven't given them adequate resources I can't expect them to succeed.
My friend took it a step further. That is how God sees us. We start off as a scribble. The scribble is our sin but we don't know it. We're doing the best we can. He walks besides us and teaches us how to turn those scribbles into circles. It's a constant process of being perfected. Once we can draw those circles if we choose to go back to scribbles he holds us accountable because we know better. However, he only holds us accountable for what we know.
